So movie this week was back to high school – The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio. I really didn’t like the first 2/3rds of this movie but I’ll admit to finding the final 3rd or so well acted and effectively dramatic. But I was so bored getting there – despite the amazing look of the film and the as-usual hyperactive directing from Baz Luhrman (Rome + Juliet and Moulin Rouge).

Big problem with the movie is the god-aweful narration by Tobey Maguire… the script never heard the phrase “show, don’t tell” and proceeds to just tell us everything that’s on screen… making all that symbolism we learned about in high school from subtext into text into TEXT and then into TEXT!!!! (get it! The eyeglasses are like GOD and they are staring at you! The green light represents hope, the future, the past, whatever – but it’s IMPORTANT and I’ll over-explain it now).

The movie clearly thinks the audience is full of morons, people who haven’t read the book and who are morons, and teenagers (who are morons).

Part of the problem is that the screenwriter loved lines from the book so much, the movie reads a number of them to us (placing the text on screen) which is inventive but, you know, if I wanted to read the book again, I’d read the book.

Acting is good though DiCaprio’s dialect seems to drop in and out (possibly intentional and subtle – but nothing in this movie is subtle so I’m guessing not) and the visuals are very pretty and stylized.

Score: 65